Songbird Menagerie by James Hautman – Buffalo – 300 pieces
Another quick 300 piece puzzle mom and I did when I was visiting. We work together pretty well, and there’s lots of great conversation, teasing, laughing, and high fives – it’s the best!🤗
This puzzle was fun, quick, beautiful, and wonderful quality to boot! The fit was excellent, the image is lovely and calm and the pieces felt thick and sturdy. Sometimes I’m not in the mood for the larger piece count Buffalo puzzles (1000 and 2000), although I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because all the pieces are squarish and they all look so similar, or maybe it’s because I can be unreasonably picky. Who can tell? I find that I don’t feel the same way about the 300 and 500 piece counts of Buffalo puzzles. My brain is so weird sometimes!
This is a great puzzle to work on with someone else, I know I loved working on it with my puzzle buddy. 😎
Dragon Rider by Lynton Levengood – Ravensburger – 100 pieces
What a gorgeous puzzle, and how disappointing that there’s a piece missing! Such beautiful artwork by Lynton Levengood, it is an absolutely stunning puzzle.
Ravensburger kid’s puzzles have the same excellent quality as their adult puzzles, yet another reason they’re my favorite puzzle company. The pieces are always thick and sturdy and feel good in your hand. The image reproduction is excellent and you can see above how well they fit together, it’s almost seamless.
I’m bummed that this one isn’t complete, my little “grandson” would have loved it. Oh well, I suppose it’s better than if I gave him an incomplete puzzle; it’s very frustrating for him when he can’t find a piece. At least I’ve got enough smarts to be sure and check them first. 🙂
Wouldn’t most kids (especially little boys) love to ride a dragon? I would. I need to ride side-saddle though, and the dragon has to promise to spew fire on a few places that have earned my wrath! Oops. Got a little off track there. Apologies. 😇
If you’ve got a little one who loves dragons, I highly recommend this puzzle! (Be sure you find one with all the pieces though)
Mickey & Minnie Forever – Mega Puzzles – 300 pieces
Here’s another puzzle that mom and I did together. There’s something about this image, the colors, the silhouette of Mickey, the comic strips in the background – I can’t properly put it into words, but this image makes an excellent puzzle and makes me happy.
I haven’t done many Mega Puzzles brand, but this one seemed to have better quality than others I remember. The pieces were on the thin side, but very sturdy and fit together remarkably well. The image reproduction is a bit shiny, but detailed and clear. This is the second of this brand in the past month that I’ve worked that has larger pieces, it seems that the larger pieces are better quality than the average 1000 piece size. Hmm. Interesting.
The assembly was more difficult than I thought it would be, but it was no match for the 2 puzzle princesses who were working on it. 😉 I will give credit to mom though, she did more of the work than I did – she’s the best!
I’m slightly re-thinking my attitude towards Mega Puzzles. I’d like to find a regular 1000 piece and another with larger pieces so I can compare them side by side. I’ll let my thrift store sensei know what her next mission is. 🛒
Pam by Michael Hague – Great American Puzzle Factory – 100 pieces
This puzzle was so interesting! It came in a very small box about 4 inches (10 cm) square, was produced in 1981, and it was still shrink wrapped! 😮
Michael Hague is a well known illustrator famous for his teddy bears. I hadn’t heard of the Michael Hague teddy bears before; they’re adorable, and unlike illustrations of other teddy bears that I’ve seen. In this puzzle, we meet Pam – a well dressed Panda bear from what I can see.
Being only 100 pieces it didn’t take long for mom and me to put this little puzzle together. The pieces were extremely loose, as you can see by some of the gaps in between pieces; we had to be very careful while assembling it because brushing the edge with your arm or hand would upset many pieces.
The image itself was a bit challenging with all of the fence in the background, it definitely wasn’t a super easy puzzle for kids – this one took a little bit more brain power. Still we had fun, and it was very cool to open a puzzle that had been sealed for 36 years!
I’ve come across several double-sided puzzles lately, and I find them very interesting to assemble. For this puzzle having 2 images to assemble was great, one was MUCH easier than the other. If you’re wanting a bit of a challenge you could assemble the sea otter picture; if you’re not in the mood for that, the image on the back is quite colorful and much easier. Mom and I assembled this one together, and we chose to assemble it with the back side up. 🙂
Informational Side 2
These puzzles are educational, I love that! On the front is the image of the endangered species, and the back shows information about where they are found in the world and how they became endangered. Very cool. There are six in the series: sea otter, koala, giant panda, asian elephant, hawksbill sea turtle, and the rain forest.
The pieces were thinner than a premium puzzle, but quite sturdy and fit together very well. The fit didn’t feel overly tight when you were assembling, but you could pick up the entire puzzle without any pieces coming out. This was very nice, because when we got down to just the pieces of the ocean we were able to flip it over and use the sea otter image to help us finish it more easily.
We enjoyed this puzzle very much and would be happy to find any of the others in the series to assemble. None of the pieces were missing, perhaps partly because they come in a large, resealable envelope with information about the puzzle series. Also very cool! You can tell these puzzles are older from the information on the envelope, no website! (also, it says 1991 🙂 )
They’re no longer being produced, but I’ve seen them on Amazon and eBay, and we got ours at the thrift store. If you find one, go for it! We had a good time assembling it. 👍
My Jigsaw Journal 